


City of Kites and Crows

by djarum99



Category: Coriolanus - Shakespeare
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Mentions of Slavery, Mentions of Violence, Shakespeare, antium exile, donmar production
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-13 03:51:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1211542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/djarum99/pseuds/djarum99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coriolanus fic (hubris, I know, it's Shakespeare) set during Caius Martius' exile in Antium, the Volscian city of Tullus Aufidius. I had to write Coriolanus out of my head. I've never been so affected by a play, or a performance. I know I'm not alone, and I hope this does some small kind of justice to shared experience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	City of Kites and Crows

Three days journey from Rome to his enemy’s gates, three days to feed the flame of rage, wither all he loves to cinders. The rabble filth who claimed his body as ward against defeat have gnawed both armor and fealty into rags. Wife and mother, child and home – no longer his, naught but memory’s smoke. 

_I. Banish. You._

Caius Martius weds his pride, and marches towards death alone.

Death, it seems, is not yet ready. Hands shaking, Aufidius accepts his bared throat with a calloused caress for a blade, joy for loathing, a kiss for malediction. Warm dry lips and the dense rasp of beard – no woman’s mouth has ever yielded such blessings. 

Rome will burn with his dragon vengeance.

**********************

The house of Tullus Aufidius is generous, and grants him a room, a slave, cotton bedding, the finest Falernian wine. Antium’s skies are softened by salt-breeze, her ships at harbor rocked by the sea. Foreign, the very air a balm against his skin. This city of pirates holds nothing of shame, nothing of Rome, and he embraces her training fields and soldiers as she has embraced him, new made. Each day fills his head with the ring of swords, the sheen of battle-sweat, the familiar truth of muscle and bone.

Each night he must fight to forget.

_My dove, he named her in their bed, my wife, my home, his son reflected glory and much more, though a father must hide his heart in the schooling of a man._

Virgilia he can yet see, though her shade is slowly fading, a tender ghost for the offering at the altar of his wrath.

Against his mother’s specter he has built a sea wall. The relentless flow of her affections, her pride – all his life, his soldier's body are defined by her riptides, and even on Antium’s shores he might drown. He will not. It was pride that sparked this fire, the only thing that he yet owns, and in fire he is reborn.

He reclines at his host’s right hand in the evenings, at a table bearing rose petals, fish and honeyed figs. Aufidius’ wife Camilla is fair and temperate, holds Martius’ eyes without fear when he speaks and guides their desultory conversation with delicacy, skill. A noble feat, with her husband’s touch lingering on the scars beneath a Roman’s shirt - scars earned at Corioli in a rain of Volscian blood.

Tullus Aufidius has what he does not. A home, a steady voice that fosters reason, forges accord with the armies of Latium and puts sharp blades in eager hands. But in the soldiers’ camps men whisper tales of Martius’ prowess, and over time beneath night’s canopy they begin to sing his praises. War’s brotherhood smears allegiance with the communal paint of carnage – soon, they dare hail him as commander. The fearless, and the foolish, dare to name him Coriolanus.

Tullus Aufidius is a man of honor, but he is not without pride, and neither deaf nor blind.

“Tomorrow, Caius. My army is ready and well-armed, and the Aequi join us at Lavinium. We will seal Rome’s fate in seven days, one for each of her hills.” 

The Volscian plants a fist against his chest, pushes his back to the wall, gently. He had drawn Martius to the garden after dining, after a kiss to his wife’s smooth cheek, and his breath smells of amber wine, the violet of Camilla’s perfume. Thick fingers smooth lower, palm his cock, cup the weight between Martius’ thighs.

“I would seal ours as well, in a tent where we can lie as equals. I would not have you serve me in this, would not do you that dishonor – but I would have this body willing. I would offer mine.” 

Martius bends, into a kiss and a contract, one he can welcome as he has combat with this lion of the field. The role of supplicant lies in tatters beside his outcast’s rags, and he can taste the spice of envy on Aufidius’ pliant tongue. Their sweat mingles, their breath, and skin to skin recognition flares hot – they have grappled so before, and this clash is not so different. Perhaps, in this, they can seal the terms of alliance. 

“In war, then, and not the peace of your house,” he says, thumbs the pulse at Aufidius’ throat and takes his leave.

The night air is humid, hot, his windowless room a stifling cave. At his entrance the slave rises from her alcove pallet, stands mute. Martius summons her with an impatient gesture, strips with her aid, but cannot shed the bindings of restlessness, anger’s ever present chafe. The small table wedged in a corner holds a basin of water, woolen cloth, a flask of oil.

“Attend me,” he orders, and she steps forward, lays trembling hands against his chest.

“With water, and the sponge.” His mouth twitches at her discomfort, as does his cock, still hard.

Her head is bowed, her braid a dark rope at her back, and he tugs it to lift her chin. She is lovely in her fear, wide-eyed in her silence, and her hands are small, cool as winter’s rain. 

“Do you have a name?”

“I am not…”

“Your name.” Martius reins in weary anger, dredges up gentleness, the little he possesses, has not left with his wife in Rome. 

_My dove…_

“Chara,” she says, and sets the basin at his feet. 

The name means joy, and if Martius does not find that in her this night, he finds a kind of peace.

She bathes him slowly, attending to scars and untouched skin with equal care. Kneading, she works the oil into his chest, his shoulders, the tight bands of muscle framing his spine. When she kneels at his hip, eyes asking permission, he nods. His cock yearns upward, twitches again, and she is bold enough to smile. To lave that part of him with tenderness, such a foreign thing to a man torn from grace for grace’s lack.

Bold enough take him in her mouth, make him stagger.

He raises a hand to strike, and ends by tangling it in her hair, freeing it from a leather cord to flow loose across her back. Wet heat, lips honey-dark against his skin, hunger coiling until he draws her up and pushes her down upon his bed. Caius Martius takes, does not ask for leave, but she belongs to this house, not to him. Honor is scarce on the ground of exile and he will hold to what he has left.

“Are you willing?” he says, and waits for her, for her hands to pull him down. 

He thinks to turn her to her knees, but there is something in her gaze, for him, something he wants, the reflection of a man, no one’s son or husband or sword. She wraps him in her arms, her thighs, and he takes her mouth without thought as a man does his bride, kisses her fierce and deep. When he feels himself near, he strokes above the place where he fills her, slick and swollen, for the pleasure of watching wonder bloom soft in a stranger’s eyes. 

Refusing to let her return to the alcove, he sleeps with her body between his own and the wall, his face in her unbound hair.

Martius wakes before sunrise, muscles taut and loathing fisting his belly. Chara is gone and he is glad of it, would not bruise the night they have passed. He leaves his bed with the dream still fresh, the tribunes’ sneer, mewling citizens of the gutter, the stench of derision and Rome’s gates behind him – blood calls, and he will answer.

Aufidius waits at his city’s walls, welcomes him with watchful eyes. Dust rises like smoke, the air thick with barked orders, war’s resolute chaos. Familiar, his true quarter, the battlefield his homeland and these her native sons. Martius breathes the dense tang of his soldiers’ sweat, the bitter reek of his salvation. The fruit of his cunning stands ready, for these men will follow him, the stars of his singular constellation, the only destiny that is his to chart. The course is fixed for red blade triumph.

Why, then, does he hear the call of the crow, the rush of black wings, the phantom plaint of his wife’s keening… 

Coriolanus takes up his sword, and marches on Rome.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This is based on my impressions of the Donmar's Coriolanus, and Tom's brilliant performance. Caius Martius is a soldier, a man of his time (of which I have only the slightest knowledge - my thanks to the internet), and defined by an arrogance that he learned at his mother's and his culture's knee. Tom Hiddleston humanized him, gave him depth beyond my previous understanding of the play. I still can't like him much, but he touched my heart. It was difficult to write him with a woman who is a slave. I needed a mirror for him, something other than his rage, and there's this weird kind of overlap between our world and the Donmar's ancient Rome. Their views on sex are not our own, and we can only see them through a modern filter. I hope the shades of gray temper this a bit. From what I understand, it was within the bounds of custom for married men (and sometimes women) to have sex with slaves and prostitutes, although there were specific rules about this and more handwavy ones about the role of sex in relationships. It's all a bit hazy, it's the fifth century B.C., and humans are complicated.
> 
> A kite, just in case you don't know, is a type of hawk, with different species found all over the world. My icon image is a white-tailed kite common to North and South America.


End file.
